Pain belongs to a community. We can’t help but share it: in songs and stories, engraved in stones, in social media posts. It is one of the great gifts of consciousness, our ability to sublimate hurt and fear into art and idea.
The would-be stoic, the lone man-wolf, the tough-as-nails, they too share their pain with the community. They might not sit on the talking couch– with a friend or therapist- but we feel their pain just the same.
Many deny their feelings, decry our weaknesses. Some sharpen their knives at home, lash outwards, righteous of their anger. They share their hurt by force, by distributing more hurt. A few share their pain with the community undiluted. They scattered shells across the floors and we are confronted with more and more pain.
For these men, it is transactional, an accounting of damage sustained versus damage inflicted. It’s a personal tally, that is reconciled with the community. Pain begets pain.
We have made isolation and anger admirable conditions of manhood. We celebrate all the traits that make a man brittle. Seething and strength. Silence and self-reliance.
Any man can be buried by a mountain. Every man will be. No man has the strength and resolve to move that avalanche alone. That takes a community.
Find a way to sublimate your pain, change it, disarm it. Make it words, or colors, or feats of derring-do. Do not make it precious, refine or cultivate it. Your pain does not make you special. Your ability to transmute and transcend pain makes you special.
Do not hide. Do not be afraid.
Take it head on, gracefully.
There is always someone who can help.
You never walk alone.
